News

Former Delia’s and J. Crew executive Walter Killough has joined consulting firm O Alliance as managing director.

The O Alliance is a new consulting firm positioned to help retailers pursue the concept of circular commerce.  In his new role, Killough will be responsible for business development, strategic partnerships and overall day-to-day management of the company. Killough spent 10 years with junior’s retailer Delia’s and most recently served as CEO. Prior to that he served as COO of J. Crew Group.

A new online resource created by the International Housewares Association (IHA) delivers fresh content on emerging home trends and housewares products.

The site, IHAInspiredHome.org, offers compelling information and ideas across a broad spectrum of home lifestyle categories, enabling consumers to connect directly with brands and companies that can meet their housewares needs.

The holidays will be a little more joyous this year for some of the 14.7 million U.S. children living in poverty. 

Bentonville, Ark. -- Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is planning to sharply cut back the growth of its U.S. supercenters in favor of smaller-format stores and acccelerated e-commerce and digital investments.    

Minneapolis -- Few companies (5%) believe they are “advanced” when it comes to omnichannel capabilities, and between 35% and 40% believe they are lagging, according to a report by SPS Commerce, a provider of enterprise retail cloud services. The company’s third annual “Retail Insight” report confirms the cross-functional challenges retailers, suppliers and logistics firms face as they build omnichannel capabilities into their operations.   

St. Louis -- Nike, Apple, Samsung, Sony, and Walmart are the top five “most beloved” brands of millenials in a report by digital advertising agency Moosylvania. The 2015 Top 50 Millennial Brand Ranking Report is based on panel studies of 1,500 millennials (defined as aged 14 to 35).   

Tel Aviv, Israel -- The average online shopper expects a Web page to render in less than three seconds, but analysis of the load times of the top 100 retailers reveals that the median home page on a desktop takes 6.5 seconds to render its primary content and 11.4 seconds to fully load.   

Pittsburgh –- Multi-format food, fuel and pharmacy retailer Giant Eagle Inc. is piloting smart devices from Brickstream for capturing and analyzing in-store data at six stores. Brickstream’s hardware and software solutions deliver the equivalent of “clickstream” analytics for the brick-and-mortar world.   

Redwood City, Calif. -- Shopping app Shopkick reported on results of its end-to-end, iBeacon compatible technology, shopBeacon, with inaugural partner American Eagle Outfitters. The teen retailer installed shopBeacon technology at over 100 locations and has tested its impact on shopper behavior over the past months.     

Cincinnati –- Millennial consumers age 18-29 seek sessions with experts to assist the purchase process. According to U.S. consumer survey research conducted by LoyaltyOne in September 2014, 84% of Millennials said that being able to redeem rewards/loyalty program points for a session or consultation with a chef or nutritionist would motivate them to shop more with that grocer.